A friend of mine has been having a hard time lately getting to sleep. I first offered to help her by calling every night before bedtime and talking to her for awhile, as my affection-less monotone can put anyone to sleep within a couple minutes. After mutually deeming that to be a stupid idea, I went with my second option: a mix CD of quiet (but not boring) songs from my favorite bands. Here’s what I came up with:
Due to an abundance of quality songs, combined with an equal abundance of very long songs (I’m a total sucker for 10-minute tracks, and there were lots of good ones this year), I’m gonna split this up over the next three days. As with the end of decade post, this isn’t a definitive list – it’s just a bunch of favorites arranged in a nice, pleasing way. If you like what you hear, go out and purchase the albums which contain these songs. If you don’t like what you hear, then you’re an idiot – have fun staring blankly at the angel tiger above (it sorta moves!).
In a week’s time, Alena Diane will be releasing a 6-song collaboration with Alina Hardin titled, Alela & Alina (catchy!). The folks at Stay Loose sent me 17% of the EP (i.e. one song), which was 100% cool of them. Since there’s no point in keeping it to myself, and since it’s such a pretty song, and since it’s named after a city that’s home to the National Corvette Museum, I figured I’d pass it along to you.
I’ll feel totally silly if it turns out that this song is about Bowling Green, Ohio. Since they don’t have a Corvette museum, I doubt it. They do have the National Tractor Pulling Championship there, though – and I’ve heard rumors about Alela Diane being a big fan of tractor pulls* – so it’s still possible.
Here is a great, full concert by Alela Diane, who has apparently cut her hair since the last time I posted a video of hers. It comes – onceagain – courtesy of the fine folks at Grandcrew.com. Two things I learned from this video: (1) the other guitar player is her dad, which is pretty cool, and (2) the bass player seems to think that he’s playing for a jam band, which is considerably less cool. Enjoy:
This is my third Grandcrew-related posting in the past month. They should be paying me for this.
I just spent the last 20 minutes trying to find a post-worthy picture of a dog licking its balls. Alas, Google Image Search has failed me in this endeavor. Maybe I should give it a try with Yahoo.
Turning off SafeSearch would probably increase my chances of success, but I can’t do that right now because I’m currently at work, and – based on past experiences searching for moderately-innocent images with no filter – I’m deathly afraid of what will turn up in any search that involves the phrase ‘dog licking balls’.
That’s the other thing: I feel weird typing ‘dog licking balls’ into a search engine – especially typing it into a work computer – so I’ve been trying other phrases that are less capable of causing my job’s I.T. guy to wonder what the fuck I’m doing. But ‘dog lick self’ or simply ‘dog licking’ just aren’t working. Life can be so disappointing sometimes.
Have you started wondering yet why I’m using a music blog to write about a futile search for a picture of a dog licking its balls?
It’s because I was getting ready to write a post about August, titled “Dog Days”. It was based around the fact that – upon returning from my road trip on Sunday – my feed reader was overloaded with unread posts from the various music blogs whose RSS feeds I subscribe to. Upon returning home, a quick check of my finances showed that my road trip went wildly over budget, which really wasn’t much of a surprise (if I’m gonna visit Traverse City, Michigan, then goddammit I’m gonna live it up while there). Faced with having no money until my next payday (tomorrow!), I’ve stayed home all week, biding my time by reading all those unread music posts and the free musical bounty contained therein.
And nothing’s stood out. Not a damn thing. This cover of Shellac’s “Prayer To God” by Solander – originally posted here in the ever-awesome FensePost – is one of the only tracks that were worthy of a second listen.
Otherwise, it’s just been one big shrug. Two of my favorite things – stumbling upon good music and having money to buy beer – have failed me this week. Combine that with the god-awful heat, and it makes for a pretty crappy month. The picture of the dog licking its balls would have been the illustrative topper for all of this.
It’s not really a crappy month, though. Another of my favorite things – being on the road – took up the first nine of these dog days. Any month in which I can do that – even one with in which I’m broke and underwhelmed by music – is gonna be a great one.
And there’s still time. We’re not even halfway through August. Again, I get paid tomorrow, so the beer situation will be solved shortly (and abundantly). And good music has a knack for sneaking up on me when I’m not expecting it.
And just as I was typing that last paragraph, I finished going through all the unread music posts in my feed reader. The very last one was a video posted on MBV of a wonderful performance by Alela Diane.
I’ve watched it three times now – will probably watch it a couple more time before my shift is over. It has definitely snuck up on me when I wasn’t expecting it. I love that feeling.
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